Venezia!

Here we go again with the whole cities with different names in different languages thing....

Venezia in Italian is Venice in English and Venedig in German. If variety is the spice of life, then this city well seasoned.

We left for Venice on the night train at 1:30am on Saturday and got there at 8:30. It was a cheap way to go, even if the compartments tend to smell like feet...

We spent the morning mostly walking around the narrow streets and canals. It is beautiful. It's not really a city to go to in order to see or do a certain list of things (though there are some), but mostly just a great city to be in, to enjoy its own uniquenesses. Here's me sporting my cougar pride near said Venetian beauty:

And no Venetian blog post could be complete without a picture of a canal (most of them are not this big):

One of the top sites in Venice is St. Mark's Basilica. We went inside, but weren't allowed to take pictures. Here's one of the main doors outside. The inside is covered in golden mosaics, the most beautiful mosaics I have ever seen. Story goes that St. Mark the Evangelist (the author of the gospel of Mark) is buried under the church's alter.

Another must see (which is really impossible not to see) are the many gondolas and gondoliere all around the city. We didn't pay for a ride (we're college students on a budget after all), but here's a picture of some of the boats:

Among the beautiful day and awesome time we had, however, there were a few dents in our experience. When we were having pizza (of course) at a café near where the above picture was taken, a pesky Venetian pigeon chose to relieve itself right above where I was sitting:

This was after I attempted to wipe it off; I survived. I'm just hoping for no resurgence of avian flu. An even more unfortunate circumstance was when one of my friends fell in a canal. There's no photo evidence (it just seemed inappropriate at the time--as I was fighting back laughter), but trust me, you do not want to swim in these canals...

The timing of our visit was also very important as we were there for Carnevale (Venice's Mardi Gras). It did mean that the city was packed with other tourists (though not unusual for Venice), but it was absolutely worth it. All day we saw people dressed in costumes like these:

So, of course we had to join in the masked fun!

At night, Piazza San Marco (St. Mark's Square) is still full of people in masks and costumes dancing, throwing confetti, and watching shows.

We returned on the night train to Salzburg leaving Venice at 12:30 and arriving back here at 9:45am. It was a long day, but absolutely worth it.

Many of my friends said they felt like they saw all they needed to see of Venice in a day. It isn't a city like London or Rome where the to-do list is infinite. That may be true if you go to Venice to see Venice, but if you go to BE in Venice, then you could easily spend much more time. The beauty is amazing, but the experience is so much more--the cafés, canals, gelato (how could I just now remember to mention the gelato?!), and simple unique beauty I could soak up for a long time to come.

Venice also left me with an overwhelming desire to learn Italian--and by "overwhelming desire" I mean: it would be cool if it could just happen because I will probably never attempt to actually learn it.

Oh well.

Arrivederci for now!